.TH CLIENT-LOCAL.CFG 5 "Version 4.3.13:  7 Jan 2014" "Xymon"
.SH NAME
client-local.cfg \- Local configuration settings for Xymon clients

.SH SYNOPSIS
.B ~xymon/server/etc/client-local.cfg

.SH DESCRIPTION
The client-local.cfg file contains settings that are used by each 
Xymon client when it runs on a monitored host. It provides a
convenient way of configuring clients from a central location
without having to setup special configuration maintenance tools on
all clients.

The client-local.cfg file is currently used to configure what logfiles
the client should fetch data from, to be used as the basis for the
"msgs" status column; and to configure which files and directories
are being monitored in the "files" status column.

Note that there is a dependency between the client-local.cfg file 
and the 
.I analysis.cfg(5)
file. When monitoring e.g. a logfile, you must first enter it into the 
client-local.cfg file, to trigger the Xymon client into reporting any 
data about the logfile. Next, you must configure analysis.cfg 
so the Xymon server knows what to look for in the file data sent by 
the client. So: client-local.cfg defines what raw data is collected 
by the client, and analysis.cfg defines how to analyze them.

.SH PROPAGATION TO CLIENTS
The client-local.cfg file resides on the Xymon server.

When clients connect to the Xymon server to send in their client
data, they will receive part of this file back from the Xymon server.
The configuration received by the client is then used the next time 
the client runs.

This method of propagating the configuration means that there is a
delay of up to two poll cycles (i.e. 5-10 minutes) from a configuration
change is entered into the client-local.cfg file, and until you see
the result in the status messages reported by the client.

.SH FILE FORMAT
The file is divided into sections, delimited by "[name]" lines.
A section name can be either an operating system identifier - 
linux, solaris, hp-ux, aix, freebsd, openbsd, netbsd, darwin - 
or a hostname. When deciding which section to send to a client,
Xymon will first look for a section named after the hostname of
the client; if such a section does not exist, it will look for
a section named by the operating system of the client. So you
can configure special configurations for individual hosts, and have
a default configuration for all other hosts of a certain type.

Apart from the section delimiter, the file format is free-form, or
rather it is defined by the tools that make use of the configuration.

.SH LOGFILE CONFIGURATION ENTRIES
A logfile configuration entry looks like this:
.sp
    log:/var/log/messages:10240
.br
    ignore MARK
.br
    trigger Oops
.sp
The \fBlog:FILENAME:SIZE\fR line defines the filename of the log, and the
maximum amount of data (in bytes) to send to the Xymon server. FILENAME
is usually an explicit full-path filename on the client. If it is enclosed
in backticks, it is a command which the Xymon client runs and each line 
of output from this command is then used as a filename. This allows
scripting which files to monitor, e.g. if you have logfiles that are
named with some sort of timestamp.
.sp
The \fBignore PATTERN\fR line (optional) defines lines in the logfile which
are ignored entirely, i.e. they are stripped from the logfile data before
sending it to the Xymon server. It is used to remove completely unwanted
"noise" entries from the logdata processed by Xymon. "PATTERN" is a regular
expression.
.sp
The \fBtrigger PATTERN\fR line (optional) is used only when there is more
data in the log than the maximum size set in the "log:FILENAME:SIZE" line.
The "trigger" pattern is then used to find particularly interesting lines
in the logfile - these will always be sent to the Xymon server. After
picking out the "trigger" lines, any remaining space up to the maximum size
is filled in with the most recent entries from the logfile. "PATTERN" is
a regular expression.

.SH COUNTING LOGENTRIES
A special type of log-handling is possible, where the number of lines matching
a regular expressions are merely counted. This is \fBlinecount:FILENAME\fR,
followed by a number of lines of the form \fBID:PATTERN\fR. E.g.
.sp
    linecount:/var/log/messages
.br
    diskerrors:I/O error.*device.*hd
.br
    badlogins:Failed login
.sp

.SH FILE CONFIGURATION ENTRIES
A file monitoring entry is used to watch the meta-data of a file: Owner,
group, size, permissions, checksum etc. It looks like this:
.sp
    file:/var/log/messages[:HASH]
.sp
The \fBfile:FILENAME\fR line defines the filename of the file to monitor.
As with the "log:" entries, a filename enclosed in backticks means a 
command which will generate the filenames dynamically. The optional 
[:HASH] setting defines what type of hash to compute for the file: 
\fBmd5\fR, \fBsha1\fR or \fBrmd160\fR. By default, no hash is calculated.
.br
\fBNOTE:\fR If
you want to check multiple files using a wildcard, you \fBmust\fR use
a command to generate the filenames. Putting wildcards directly into
the \fBfile:\fR entry will not work.

.SH DIRECTORY CONFIGURATION ENTRIES
A directory monitoring entry is used to watch the size of a directory 
and any sub-directories. It looks like this:
.sp
    dir:DIRECTORYNAME
.sp
The \fBdir:DIRECTORYNAME\fR line defines the filename of the file to monitor.
As with the "log:" entries, a filename enclosed in backticks means a 
command which will generate the filenames dynamically. The Xymon client
will run the
.I du(1)
command with the directoryname as parameter, and send the output back to the
Xymon server.
.br
\fBNOTE:\fR If you want to check multiple directories using a 
wildcard, you \fBmust\fR use a command to generate the directory names. Putting 
wildcards directly into the \fBdir:\fR entry will not work. E.g. use something
like
.br
	dir:`find /var/log -maxdepth 1 -type d`

The "du" command used can be configured through the \fBDU\fR environment 
variable. On some systems, by default \fBdu\fR reports data in disk blocks
instead of KB (e.g. Solaris). So you may want to configure the Xymon client
to use a \fBdu\fR command which reports data in KB, e.g. by setting
.br
    DU="du -k"
.br
in the xymonclient.cfg file.

.SH NOTES
The ability of the Xymon client to calculate file hashes and monitor those
can be used for file integrity validation on a small scale. However, there is
a significant processing overhead in calculating these every time the Xymon
client runs, so this should not be considered a replacement for host-based
intrusion detection systems such as Tripwire or AIDE.

Use of the directory monitoring on directory structures with a large number
of files and/or sub-directories can be quite ressource-intensive.

.SH "SEE ALSO"
analysis.cfg(5), xymond_client(8), xymond(8), xymon(7)

